This swim was not good. It took at least half of the swim to get my heart rate down. I could only go a few strokes and then needed to catch my breath.

I can only assume that the problem was that this was my first open water swim of the year. I was doing fine last year, but the practice swims have all been canceled due to weather this spring. I've got to get into the open water more.

I'm specifically trying to improve transitions, so this went pretty well. I used a volunteer wetsuit stripper and got out of T1 fairly quickly.

My heart rate was too high because of the poor swim. I needed to not run as fast to let it come down. A better swim would result in a better T1 time.

The hills on the course are fairly challenging, but not unexpected. Very little of Virginia is flat. I was hurting towards the end, so I think I'm a bit undertrained on the bike.

Keep training with longer rides and hills.

Again, I'm working to speed up transitions. This one is a bit of an aberration because I had to use the porta-john. That probably added a minute to my time. Otherwise, I think this was pretty good.

I have to use porta-john at this point or run would be worse.

My goal was a run split under 1:50. Unfortunately, the hills on the third lap kept me from that. I don't think the bike sapped my strength, I think it's simply the distance and the hills.

I'm not sure, but I don't want to have to walk any of these miles. I walked the hills on the third lap.

My legs and hips were quite sore after the race. I think it was the hills. I got some Coke and pizza and relaxed for a bit.


Open water swim problems, hills on the bike, and hills on the run.


This is a good race by MTS-VTS. I was hoping to break 5:20. I think if I really train well and get a flatter course, I may even have a 5 hour half in me. I need to work on open water swimming and try to figure out how to get faster on the bike.